UniversityTrustees and Racism in Indiana

It is not difficult being right in predicating politics and economic development in NWI; because the competition is so low. In my enthusiasm to move NWI development of its potential in higher education, I allowed myself to fall into the sin of hubris about an individual who has worked very hard to improve the lot of many people, especially minorities.

This individual is Mamon Powers, Jr.

As a Jew on the Day of Atonement I ask G-d for forgiveness for sins committed against Him. But, sins, including errors and omissions, committed against our fellow man can only be forgiven by correcting those errors. Therefore I must correct the perception I may have left that Mr. Powers, as an individual, did not have vision, lacked commitment and integrity in dealing with people and the needs of NWI. The facts are quit the opposite.  Ironically, after all the columns I have written, and after all the speeches I have given, he was only the second person to contact me to talk and explain himself. The other was State Senator Earline Rogers, a fine person, with whom I still disagree but greatly respect.

When I criticized Mr. Powers, I was solely focusing on his role as a Purdue University Trustee. In meeting him, I saw as a son of Gary as a successful business man who was a caring and committed citizen of NWI. There are many individuals in NWI who owe their success to him.  He has dedicated his time and money to help many individuals to gain access to education and business opportunities, as I learned all of which comes from the heart not for some external benefit to him.  Certainly as a person, any faults I may have attributed to him were incorrect.

Both Mr. Powers and I started as undergraduates at Purdue, West Lafayette in the same year. It is no understatement to say that our experiences were entirely different as a white, although Jewish, student and a black student. Although I had my share of incidents, including being blackballed solely because I was Jewish, it did not compare to Mr. Powers’ experience. Mamon Powers re-ignited in me the passion for rights I had then and also made me appreciate the continued difficulty a black businessman has today even in Gary, Indiana.

But my passion for institutional solutions still remains. And frankly, a good portion of the solution of the problem raised remains in the hands of Purdue’s Board of Trustees, of which Mr. Powers is the representative of NWI. (Everything being said here also applies to Indiana University’s Trustees and their categorical institutional racist treatment of IUN). The difference between institutional and individual racism is that an individual racist believes that someone of a different ethnic or racial group should inherently be treated in some inferior way. Institutional racism is the conditions where governmental structures and histories, including higher education, are structured in such a way as to favor one group over another or one geographic area over another.

To make it clear, I do not have any reason to believe that any trustee of Purdue or IU is a racist individually. On the other hand, for forty plus years, the system has been so structured to favor the higher education of Hoosier whites, out-of-state whites, and foreign students over Hoosier Hispanics and African-Americans. Although this may not be strictly speaking racist, the system also favors white children of college graduates over first generation whites attending universities. an important discrimination against NWI and Fort Wayne.

The consequence to the State is continuous economic depression, loss of population, brain drain, and loss of national political clout.

The projects that West Lafayette and Bloomington are selling to the State Legislature: the Interstate 65 bio-technology corridor and the Interstate 69 technology corridor is not going to work because it does not address the reality of the problem that Indiana has which the Department of Education has already identified as a mis-distribution of higher education dollars.

The institutional racism is an indisputable fact because the main centers for educating Hoosier minorities, NWI, receives annually about $4,000 less per student than Indianapolis and about $7,000 less than Bloomington and West Lafayette. The reason for this is the historical funding structure created 40 years ago; and when you add a fixed % to every year the marginal differences do not change.  This fact has been quantified by the US Department of Education's National Center for Educational Statistics when it ranked Indiana 50th out of 50 states in its mal-distribution of higher education dollars.  This indicates that a far too great a share of Indiana State Tax dollars are going to two or three campuses and the rest are being starved.  When the rest of the campuses are the ones that educate minorities and first generation white college attendees, this is institutional racism.  It is also the underlying reason Indiana has never economic developed as a state.  You cannot argue with the facts.

Year in and year out, Blacks and Hispanics are provided less money for their higher education in Indiana by the system that is set up to fund these institutions. Only the Trustees can change this. But the push must come for the people, the minorities who are affected.

Today, Mr. Powers can get that political support. NWI State Legislatures would listen to his vision to structurally end racism in higher education in Indiana.